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The Bush tax cuts made little economic sense in 2001 and 2003, and it makes little sense to extend any of them now. But it will probably happen anyway.

Even as they slam Obama and the Democrats for ballooning the federal deficit, Republicans insist that all the Bush tax cuts be extended. That would cost a cool $3 trillion over the next decade, but don’t expect the GOP to fill that gaping hole in the federal budget with spending cuts. Most Republicans have run like scalded dogs from Rep. Paul Ryan’s “roadmap” to a balanced budget, which calls for deep cuts in Medicare and Social Security. So let’s be clear: Republicans want to pay for tax cuts by borrowing more from the Chinese and other foreign lenders.

President Obama is in a bind as well. He promised during his campaign to extend the Bush cuts for the “middle class,” defined as families earning less than $250,000 and individuals earning less than $200,000. That promise helped him deflect GOP efforts to brand him as an inveterate tax hiker. But it would cost about $1.4 trillion over the next decade, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation.

With the national debt on course to reach 90 percent of GDP over the next decade, America really can’t afford any of the Bush tax cuts just now. Letting all or most of them expire would give the president’s fiscal commission more room to devise a balanced package of spending and tax reforms aimed at shrinking our massive and unsustainable overhang of public debt.

But with unemployment stuck in the stratosphere, and with Democrats apparently facing sizable losses in the midterm election, it’s hard to ask them to expose middle-class families to higher taxes – especially when Republicans can be counted on to indulge in lock-step, over-the-top demagoguery.

So any extensions of middle class tax cuts ought to be temporary. That would set the stage for what we really need once jobless rates fall back to earth: a sweeping overhaul of federal taxes to make them simpler, more progressive, more economically efficient, and more capable of raising what we need to pay our own bills.

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